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gojuo · 10 months

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Are you the strongest because you are gojo satoru or are you gojo saturo because you are the strongest? I never understood why geto said that to gojo, can you explain to me? Did he want to give gojo a reality check?

Actually, he wanted to give Gojo an identity crisis lmao. In other words, what Geto's saying is that: Are you you? ("Are you the strongest because you are Gojo Satoru?") Or are you letting your strength define your sense of self? ("Are you Gojo Satoru because you are the strongest?").

In that moment, Geto was completely defeated/resigned/pessimistic (I can't find the right word arghggg) because he realized that what he wanted to achieve, he never could. But Gojo totally could because in the year between Riko's death and that moment, he had surpassed anyone and everything, and had become — for a lack of a better term — an untouchable god (Infinity automatically on at all times; RCT & RCT: Red; Hollow Purple; Domain Expansion mastered; in the process of mastering brain healing 24/7; etc.).

What Toji did to Gojo was turn him from The Strongest to Stronger Than The Strongest (omgggg romance <3 Tojigo agenda never ends). Essentially, Gojo had become far stronger than Geto, a fellow Special Grade and part of "The Strongest Duo", was and had risen up to be in a league completely on his own. This event in his life + Geto going rogue gave way to the worsening of Gojo's identity crisis.

That identity crisis I'm talking about is Gojo's lifelong status as "The Strongest" and his role in Jujutsu Society from the second he was born.

"The curses' increasing strength... At that moment, I understood the reason why! It's because of him! It's because of Satoru Gojo!! It's like when a seemingly unbeatable track-and-field record gets broken! Or when figure skaters suddenly have to add more spins to their jumps due to a single athlete's prowess!! When Satoru Gojo was born... the balance of the world was altered!"

From the second Gojo was born, he was not allowed to be Gojo Satoru (himself; "Are you the strongest because you are Gojo Satoru?"). He was pushed into a role by his birth family, his clan, other clans, and the entirety of Jujutsu society. Gojo was never just Satoru, the child, or Satoru, the person. From birth on, he was the Six Eyes, the Limitless ("Are you Gojo Satoru because you are the strongest?"). The bounty on his head was already over a hundred thousand before he turned 10 years old.

When Satoru Gojo was born, the balance of the world was altered.

This meant that he was raised as The Strongest, a role not only pushed onto him by the society and family he was born into, but by fate itself (the Tengen affair — remember that the Six Eyes is connected to Tengen and the Star Plasma Vessels through fate. A fate broken by the only one who lives outside of it: Toji Zen'in the man with absolutely no cursed energy at all. TOJIGO AGENDA NEVER ENDS GRAAAAAAAHHH)

Being raised as a thing instead of a person would lead any child to an identity crisis. He says it himself in ch. 236

He feels like nobody truly understands him, because there is nobody on his level of being. Nobody can stand beside him because of the disparity in strength between him and everybody else. He feels like he can't ever let anybody inside. He feels this way because Gojo defines his own sense of self — his identity and his own existence — through the strength he holds ("Are you Gojo Satoru because you are the strongest?"). Because he was raised to think like that. Because he was pushed into the role of "The Strongest" by fate, his family, all of society before he was able to define himself as just himself.

Gojo going to Jujutsu High in his teens would have been the first time he actually spent meaningful time with people who live outside of rigid clan society and culture. Geto, Shoko, Nanami and Haibara, none of them are from clans, so none of them would have treated him as if he were the Six Eyes and the Limitless first, human second. They would have treated him as just Gojo Satoru, their classmate in high school. Like a normal person. His belief system would have been challenged for the first time since his identity wouldn't be characterized by how strong he is, by his role as The Strongest in Jujutsu society. He'd just be another kid to his classmates.

Now that doesn't mean that his issues with his identity and Jujutsu society's dogma he was force-fed since birth were all fixed and everything was dandy, it just means that that line from Geto and his betrayal worsened what was already there and continuously reinforced and reaffirmed by Jujutsu society's penchant in making him a pariah (Nanami participated in this after Haibara's death btw, "Can't we just leave everything to him from now on?").

Are you the strongest because you're Gojo Satoru? Or are you Gojo Satoru because you're the strongest?

Geto asked this because he was angry at the world, defeated by it, and hurt by what Gojo had just said to him.

Because the thing is... Gojo is totally capable of killing all of humanity and creating a world only made up of only sorcerers. Gojo is The Strongest. Far stronger than Geto is. In the year between Riko's death and this moment, Gojo had far surpassed Geto in strength. The Strongest Duo — something that was a double-edged sword since it reaffirmed Gojo's belief that the measure of one's strength and prowess defines one's sense of identity BECAUSE there is now another Special Grade that is as strong as him, on the same level as him, therefore feeding into his confirmation bias — was no more. Gojo achieved enlightenment, Geto did not. Therefore, he was upset by Gojo saying that Geto wanting to create a world with only sorcerers was meaningless and impossible. And so Geto hit him where it hurt: Are you Gojo Satoru? Or are you just the role assigned to you?

Are you the strongest because you're Gojo Satoru? Are you your own person?

Or are you Gojo Satoru because you're the strongest? Or are you just a thing? A thing called The Strongest?

The second Gojo was born, he was dehumanized. Not just by his family, not just by Jujutsu society, but by the world itself. He was born into a world that adjudged him to be a thing — in his own words: an adored flower standing far above humanity and therefore untouchable in every sense of the way — not a person, an actual human being with his own identity. His time in high school, where he lived and existed outside of the confines of clan culture for a short period of time, was probably the first time in his life where he felt human. There were kids his age who weren't raised in clans, who weren't fed Jujutsu dogma from the second they started breathing, who didn't know him as The Strongest. He was just a fellow kid. And there was Geto, who was a Special Grade just like him, someone that Gojo would have categorized to be the same as him and who he would have projected his uncertainty about his own identity onto as well (because of his confirmation bias).

And then Toji comes along and changes his life forever. It's so ironic (and also the biggest reason why I love this ship so much), the one and only person who lives outside of the confines of fate (zero cursed energy) destroys and redefines the one person who came into existence precisely because of said fate (the Six Eyes is born because fate calls for them to be born in order to help Tengen with the merger). Gojo dies and comes back to life enlightened. All because "a monkey who couldn't even use Jujutsu" killed him. The poetry of it all, my god....

Okay anyways I'm getting distracted (Tojigo agenda never ends) what I'm trying to say is that Geto went through a complete different experience than Gojo did, and got left behind basically. While Gojo grew stronger and stronger (not necessarily a good thing for him), Geto went off the deep end and stayed stagnant on the powerscale.

This happening to Geto leads to his betrayal + him asking that question which in turn led to the worsening of Gojo's identity crisis. Because Gojo chose to define himself through the strength he holds and not through being his own person. And that belief only got reaffirmed more and more because Gojo truly became untouchable, truly reached enlightenment and lived on a plane not a single person could reach, not even the other person who was also called "The Strongest". So when Geto asked him, "Are you the strongest because you're Gojo Satoru? Or are you Gojo Satoru because you're the strongest?" he's asking, who are you really? Are you a person who happens to be the Strongest also? Or are you The Strongest, and nothing else?

Gojo, throughout his entire life up until that point, was raised to be and treated by everyone as the latter. During high school and his time together with another "The Strongest" around, he found a taste of humanity within his own self. Geto then goes rogue and asks this question, and Gojo decides that yes indeed, he is the latter. He validates his own dehumanization through making that choice.

And what's awful about this is that, he didn't need to do allat. He didn't need to isolate himself, he didn't need to decide that no one would or could understand him, nor did he need to resign himself to the role of "adored flower" that was pushed onto him since birth. Why? Well, Shoko says it best here in ch. 220:

Gojo made the choice to let his sense of self be defined by his status as The Strongest ("Or are you Gojo Satoru because you're the strongest?"), when that shit wasn't needed at all. But as a child, when all the people that surround you, the people who gave birth to you, the people who raised you all parrot the same shitty idea that he is The Strongest The Strongest the strongest the strongestthestrongestthestrongestthestrongestthestrongest, and then that kid escapes to high school where he has a few years of being allowed to be a normal teenager and then his BFF decides to become Jujutsu Hitler and throw that The Strongest crap back into his face right where it hurts? Well, what did anyone expect? It's just fucking sad.

And that's also the reason why I hated his death and the conclusion to his character, because Gojo dying without ever getting over being "The Strongest" while he was alive means that his character stayed stagnant throughout the entire story. And I cannot explain to you enough how much I hate that. But that's a topic for another time, so I'm ending this analysis that got way longer than I intended here. I hope this helped you understand that scene better ♥

#there are 35 becauses in this post oh my dayssss im so sorry i just really cant be bothered to clean this post up 😭😭😭#this got so long it's literally 1.7k words i cant believe it ... it was just supposed to be one paragraph...#this is more a word vomit than it is a piece of meta & like i said i cannot be bothered to proofread this so im sorry if i repeated myself #a lot and rambled on too much. it is what it is.#gojo #jjk #jjk meta #anonymous #answered

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